Pageviews past week

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Of Pilgrimages

Next day's hike took us a couple of miles on foot to the next village, up a tram, and up yet another few thousand feet to a monastery.

Cows reposing near a shrine. Austrians build these all over up in their mountains. When I was hiking in this vicinity on another trip, I remember our hiking guide pausing at all manner of these along our mountain path and being very perplexed that my Mormon hiking mates and myself were not the least bit interested in adding piety to our hike. We smiled politely but stopping to pray publicly was not in our realm of experience.
﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Maria Waldrast is the highest monastery in Europe. We met two Catholic priests from Washington DC who have been coming here together for decades. Supposedly the water here is magically healing. I wanted to soak my feet in it, but my better judgment overruled that. I had an ice cream bar instead.

That thin steel rail line snaking down the mountain will be remembered fondly by the kind reader as the mad dash down depicted on video a few weeks ago about which so many have commented.

Goodreads

Search This Blog

About Me

My husband and I recently bought an 8 acre "farm" in southeastern Idaho. I'm not sure what possessed us, but we left Omaha looking literally for greener pastures WITHOUT WIND!! Prior to that we lived in and loved NJ, but not my husband's 4 hour daily commute into Manhattan. Mugsy lives at our house. He's much more interesting than either my husband or I. Currently we live in Beijing, China, where we teach written and oral English at Peking University.